


It Always Starts with a House...

by tevlek



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-04-21 08:06:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4821602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tevlek/pseuds/tevlek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marianne was killed by Roland on her wedding day and he inherited her money after her death. Naturally, the couple's dream home still being built begins to encounter strange activity that fell dormant after Roland abruptly moved out of the house.<br/>Now, several years later, there is a new buyer willing to finish the work that had been started...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The path was so overgrown it tripped the real estate agent up about three times before she finally took more care in where she stepped rather than trying to give the typical “it looks a little run down but it has great potential” spiel. Her heel caught on another tangle of grass and weeds and she huffed in defeat, picking her way through until she reached the base of the stoop, waving on her potential buyer with a friendly gesture. A tall, thin man whose gauntness only seemed to make him look even taller stalked his way through the weeds, shuffling through them like a plow compared to the agent. His hands were buried deep in his pockets, eyes appraising the house the nearer he came to it. The real estate agent didn’t know it yet but he didn’t really care a lick about the potential the house held within its abandoned halls. He could see it for himself what he could do to it but more importantly, he needed a house and he needed it to be isolated from the rest of the world. A fixer-upper would help keep him busy.

Help him forget.

“It doesn’t look that old.” He commented, stopping in the middle of the path and tilting his head back to take in the structure.

“Well, the original owner was in the process of still having it built before they abandoned the project after a death in the family. Guess he found it too painful to finish, poor soul.” She commented, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “They started construction in the early nineties so it’s to code more so than some of the older homes we saw.” 

The house looked like a strange mixture between Victorian and Cape Cod style in craftsmanship; he saw more homes like this in pictures of New England coastal towns than in the middle of overgrown forests. Whoever planned this house obviously had two different opinions butting heads over the home’s design in its blueprint stages. The real estate agent beckoned him forward and he withdrew his hands from his pockets, nearly skipping the steps entirely in one large step up onto the small, square porch. A porch swing hung near the edge of the covered entrance, the chain rusted and one end of the bench half collapsed to the porch from wood rot.

The windows, long and narrow, were all boarded up; leaving him guessing on the state of the glass beneath but the front door was in good shape, aside from the odd gouges in the peeling green paint. Several of the paint chips looked as if they had been ripped off rather than flaking off naturally, pieces scattered on the boards like curling dead leaves that he swept aside with a swipe of his shoe. The agent unlocked it and stepped inside, holding the door open with her hip to invite him in. He ducked his head a smidge under the doorframe but it wasn’t too much of a hassle. When you grow up a bean pole, you learn to adapt to average door frames.

The foyer was small, intimate in size, its staircase creating an angular passage to the upper floors made from dark woods bearing a reddish hue. The green and gold carpet runner covering the steps was filthy, not to mention hideous and needed to be ripped out. There were electric lights in golden sconces that were meant to illuminate the narrow hallway beyond the foyer but he was willing to bet money that they wouldn’t work even if the power had been turned on. Those bulbs hadn’t seen a drop of juice since the mid-nineties, so it was likely some electrical work would be in order.

There was a room across from the stairwell that must have been constructed to be a parlor. It was carpeted with the same carpet as the stair runner, a single glass light fixture gone yellow with dust hung alone on the ceiling. Well, at least there was no popcorn ceiling. Thank God for small favors. They scooted down the hall, Bog wrinkling his nose at the abundance of that same green and gold carpeting laying out the path before them. The first doorway they entered off the hall led to the living room, no furniture but there was a shattered glass coffee table in the corner that had seen better days. At least there was no carpet; it was actual hardwood with a stained oriental rug limply lying off to the corner of the room.

Further in she showed him an open kitchen with honey oak cabinets, typical nineties choice in his opinion. He’d bet the mortgage on this place that they weren’t real wood. The tile counters made him cringe and he made a mental note to take a sledgehammer to them as soon as possible. He tailed the realtor into the adjacent dining room. It was big. Probably meant for a large family to gather for the stereotypical evening meal and yet the room was cleared of furniture. The odd thing about the dining room was that the tan draperies had been shredded; the curtain rods ripped out of the wall over one window while the other barely hung on the thread of its last screws, fabric pooling useless on the floor. If the house had been abandoned, he shouldn’t be surprised to see some vandalism in the structure. This, however, seemed a bit tame for vandalism. It was more like a fit of rage than some bored teenager goofing off in an abandoned house.

“There is access to the backyard from the kitchen if you would like to see it.” The realtor offered, holding out a hand to indicate back into the kitchen. “Or we could head upstairs.”

He stepped back out of the dining room archway, turning about on his heel. He flipped the lock on the latticed door. Another boarded up portal but the panels reflected the sunlight, proving the glass was still intact when he opened it up and stuck his head outside. There was a peeling white veranda on the back with three stairs leading to the overgrown yard stretched out behind the house. While there was some lawn, he appreciated that the original owners didn’t clear out the trees for more empty space like most people did when living on lots near the woods. He never liked big open spaces and this suited him just fine. He leaned further outside and could make out bits of unruly shrubbery where someone probably planned to garden once, primroses proudly stretching their bright pink petals in the sunlight filtering through the shading overhead trees.

“Let’s see the rest of it.” He stepped back inside and shut the door after him. If he wanted a look at the outdoor aspects of the property, there was plenty of time to observe it if he purchased the place.

The second floor of the house was another long hallway with doors flanking left and right. Bog could see the stairs made another twist upward towards the third story of the building but the realtor explained it was actually the attic of the house and they could look into it later if he wanted to but the flooring hadn’t been finished yet. They poked their heads into three bedrooms and a bathroom, all of them unfinished with bare walls and floors still bearing sawdust. He would have to invest in drywall and figure out a suitable flooring choice for the guest rooms. The master bedroom at the end of the hall was all that was finished on the second story. It was spacious but both the real estate woman and himself had to hang back in shock at first sight of the state of the room. There was still furniture, large and tacky with a massive bed shoved beneath the windows but that wasn’t what made them nearly resist entering the room. The bed looked like it had been thrown through a shredder, moldering stuffing hanging out of exposed springs and marks gouged into the headboard and footboard of the bed.

“The previous owner leave in a hurry?” he asked, glancing over at the realtor.

She gave a nervous smile at him and he sighed, cautiously entering the room as if the assailant of the bed was still lingering inside. He checked the closet space first. There were a few plastic hangers from clothing stores lying on the carpet but the closet would have been more than generous to his limited clothing selection. Next he found an en suite with outdated fixtures but there was a massive tub nestled beneath a window that looked like it would even fit his awkward frame if given the chance. He half debated climbing in to test the theory but the agent looked too nervous where she fidgeted in the doorway to want to stick around. Checking the shower stall, there was still a bottle of shampoo on the built-in shelf along with a little shaving mirror and rusted razor. Across from the tub was practically a wall-consuming mirror over double sinks. The cabinets under the sinks bore a ridiculous amount of hair products that looked more like they were stockpiled but there was also make-up in one of the drawers. Whoever lived here before was starting to give a new meaning to the word “vanity.”

Noticing that the realtor was getting a bit more fidgety, he waved her on out ahead of him. He lingered behind, observing the gouges in the bed frame, reaching his hand out and tracing the marks with the tips of his fingers. A chill ran down his spine as he realized that the markings were made by fingernails. Long shallow marks dug into the wood in four even lines that while his fingers had to be practically together to match, he gathered they were certainly made by human hands. Either someone was rowdy in the sack once upon a time or it was something more sinister in nature that caused such marks.

The room wasn’t feeling as empty as it had before and he glanced about, checking to make sure the agent hadn’t come back but it was still just him in the bedroom. The skin of his arms prickled at a strange chill befalling the room and Bog shuddered, rubbing a hand at his bare arm absently. He observed a more uniform set of scratches, letters carved into the finish of the headboard but so vague he couldn’t make them out. Attempting to trace them with his finger to try and decipher the word, a sharp pain flared across his back.

Jumping back from the bed, his hands immediately craned around himself to feel at the searing burn that made him hiss between his teeth. Even through his t-shirt he could feel the skin of his back was unusually cold. He had expected it to be burning because of heat but it was the opposite. Whatever had caused the pain was cold enough to burn. There was nothing he could have bumped into in that moment to cause the burning pain in his back, which was probably all the prompting he needed in leaving the master bedroom.

He thoughtfully rubbed at his stinging back when clomping back down the stairs, finding the realtor in the front doorway of the house waiting for him. Her fingers were drumming on the clipboard impatiently until she caught him coming down and they stilled immediately. The saleswoman smile was back and he indicated they go outside to the porch. She obliged and he shut the door after them, turning to face her while letting his hand drop away from his back.

“Well, Mr. King, what do you think?” she asked with a grin.

“The previous owners, was it one of them who died?” he asked, nodding a house to the door behind him.

“Ah—“ she hesitated a moment and that all but confirmed his suspicions.

“How did they die?”

“Well, the owner’s fiancé was murdered, Mr. King.” She admitted, clutching her notes close. “On the same day they were supposed to be married, no less! He couldn’t bear to try and live in the house that was supposed to be their dream home together so that was why he abandoned the project.”

“Murdered on her wedding day…sounds like a ghost story.” He knew ghost stories. They were a big part of his life growing up in Scotland among tales of spirits, goblins and fair folk. America didn’t have anything so fanciful as fairies living under mounds in the moors but they could lay plenty of claims to ghost stories. Plenty of haunted battlegrounds, jilted lovers, and crazed murderers here to give even the British Isles a run for their money in paranormal activity.

“If you’re concerned about the house’s history, I’m sure we could find—“

“I never said I was concerned,” he interrupted her, holding up a hand. “I need a house and this is the only one that has met any of my requirements.”

That seemed to cheer her up because she was smiling again, looking hopeful. “Why don’t we head back to town and look over the listings one more time before we call it a day? You can chew on this offer for a while and see if it’s exactly what you need and until then, I have plenty of other options we can visit.”

He shrugged his shoulders, following her off the porch and back up the path to return to her car.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the house while she picked her way through the undergrowth again and studied the boarded up windows thoughtfully. The bank loan was probably going to eat him alive over the next several years and his mother was going to wring his scrawny neck when she found out he was actually considering buying this house in the woods.

It didn’t take much to imagine the argument they would get into over this house. It was a pile of problems compiled of rotten wood, leaky roof, stained siding, broken furnishings, outdated fixtures, and God-awful carpeting. He’d never get everything done on his own and that was fine by him. He had plenty of workers to help him on what he couldn’t do alone. She would point out that the place was a disaster waiting to happen and on that, he would agree with her. The house was a nightmare waiting to be experienced, but he sure as hell was ready to start suffering it.


	2. Full of Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ghost doesn't know the present. It doesn't know the future. All it knows is the past.  
> At least that is how things are until something disturbs its rest...

_My little buttercup…_

Her hands clawed at her ears, desperately wishing she could remove the endearing words from where they seemed to echo but the dreaded sweetness was embedded within her very essence. Her body was formless, it had no substance to anything except herself and yet she still existed in this world beyond the simple measure of day and night, month or year, nothing seemed to hold any value in this quiescence that was death. All she had left were memories. Perhaps that was all that a spirit was even made out of once the body was gone. It wasn’t the skeleton and moldering fabric buried away in the family plot miles away, that was certain. It was a collection of bygone experiences woven into a being that was incapable of a true sense of present, or future, merely existing in constant past.

_Prettier than a magnolia in May, my darlin’!_

Was she pretty? She couldn’t remember if she was pretty. All she remembered was his attractive face and how it practically radiated whenever he smiled at her. His laughing green eyes had been tender, loving in one moment but then there were flashes of cruel determination that would mask them with a much more violent image that left her wanting to shield her eyes. Another gesture which was useless to her, there was nothing she could physically do to block out the images. His voice laughed in her ears, warm and infectious despite how she tried to block him out, palms pressing harder into her ears but he overpowered her. The laughter turned colder, unfeeling.

_Until death do us part!_

An earth-shattering scream overpowered her and she recoiled from the volume of the shriek, curling into a mere ball before she realized that she was the one screaming. Her mouth wasn’t open but she knew it had been her that screamed through the darkness. A distant memory of sheer terror coming back through the haze. Pain, jarring and raw radiated through her heart, her chest burned with the agony of a dozen stabbing sensations and her hands drifted over herself, fingers seeking wounds even though her vagueness was unable to feel anything. The cycle was going to begin again now; she could feel its impending arrival. Her awareness would slip away from her and she wouldn’t be aware of the darkness surrounding her anymore. A comforting cradle of childhood memories so sweet and happy before she knew what pain the mere act of living could be. There was a woman with hair the color of dandelions and a long, slender neck that she remembered pressing her face into as a source of comfort. There was a little girl with hair just like the woman’s and large blue eyes so innocent she wanted to shelter her from the world she had unwittingly been born into. A girlish giggle, a man with a warm voice and dark hair, flashes of a life she couldn’t focus on long enough before the series of memories moved on. Her senses were fogging over, the empty world around her ever dark. She was falling back into the clutches of the memories warring between the happy glow of love and the bitter darkness of betrayal. Once again, she was to relive the unceasing cycle of the past like a film she was forced to watch over and over.

A roar broke through her haze, snapping her from the oblivion and breaking the chain of memories when she felt a flicker of strength that gave her a sense of presence for just a millisecond. The roar choked and spluttered, a snarling curse punctuating the abrupt death of the noise. Compared to the roar, the curse sounded distant like the warmer memories of the man with the golden hair but it was wrong. The voice was wrong. It was a stranger’s voice from the plethora of words and whispers her presence muddled through in her memories. It was distant but it was also close at the same time. Whatever had made that sound before made it again, puttering and hiccupping until there was a sharp, metallic clang like it had been struck by something that resulted in the device falling into a steady rumble. That flicker of a sensation returned, this time it lingered and coaxed her to the source of the noise with the promise of energy, of a semblance of a body again.

All she needed to do was take it.

Drifting through the endless darkness, she was startled when she saw a strange red box with the parts of a motor obvious underneath the red casing. The rumbling device practically glowed with energy, everything else around it a shadow that she couldn’t make anything out of when she went to it. Her hands extended towards it, hovering near its power like hands warming near a campfire. She wriggled her fingers, wanting to feel more but the energy was contained. It was being stored inside of the box out of her reach. Well, whatever this was, it was useless trying to hide the power. She could simply take it, like she took the energy of that strange woman who danced in and out of her memory, tottering around in heels surprisingly vivid amidst the mists of her stasis and escorting something or someone through the shadows of her world in a peculiar pattern as if there were obstacles to move around, stairs to climb and doors to open when Marianne knew no such structure herself, only darkness all around her.

The woman had been bright, cheerful and energetic. She eagerly leeched energy from her to chase her away from wherever it was they were. This space was hers, even if she couldn’t see it she held a fierce protectiveness over it. The woman disappeared back into the darkness easily enough but she came back again and again, rousing her from her memories long enough to grow irritated that she would not take a hint and leave her alone. One occurrence, be it the last or one before that time, she found the woman leading around another energy but it was so vague she could barely make it out compared to the full form of the woman. If it was another person, their life force was a very weak one, darkened by what felt like sadness and a deep, broiling anger. Nothing like the woman’s perkiness that made her stand out like a fluorescent bulb in the night. Whatever the second had been, she made sure to get her point across that she didn’t want it there either. Feeding off the woman’s discomfort, she clawed at the hidden energy with angry nails and that had done the job for it drifted out of her presence quickly enough but her action also robbed her of that scant amount of energy, returning her to her previous dormancy.

Her attention focused on the purring red box and she eagerly dug her hands inside, pushing past the plastic and metal and the electric jolt of pure power suddenly flowed up her limbs. She fed off of it greedily, the motor rushing to keep up with the juice she was pulling out of it. She absorbed it deeper into herself, suddenly able to see her arms reaching through the darkness. The sight of her own limbs instead of the simple knowledge they were there left her smiling, digging further into the box for more. A room illuminated with daylight slowly bled out of the shadows, the darkness slithering away and she nearly pulled her hands free, startled at the familiar sight of what was once a parlor.

_Her parlor,_ her memories supplied helpfully. It was aged, the wallpaper was peeling and the ugly carpeting was thankfully beyond saving—whose idea had it been to pick that out again? Ah, it was the man with the golden hair that chose that! He had horrible taste. Turning back to the box she grabbed up more of the energy, eyes trailing after the receding shadows that drifted out through the archway and into the next room but even through the portal she could make out more of a house beyond the parlor. The motor wheezed, losing steam to how quickly she was taking what it produced.

“No, no, no, no!” a voice cried, the same one she heard curse earlier and she spotted a man charging through from the other room. She puzzled at the height of the man, very nearly brushing the top of his head on the archway when he strode inside. It was needless to say he was tall, more so than the man with the golden hair and herself by leaps and bounds. He was all bones and sharp angles, dressed in a dark t-shirt and worn jeans with heavy paint-splattered boots and mustard yellow work gloves that he wrenched off and threw to the floor, exposing long-fingered hands with bony knuckles that bulged when he clenched them into fists, pounding one against the side of the device then on top of it. He didn’t even notice her there. Perhaps that meant she wasn’t as manifested as she felt she had become. The pounding hand went right through her arms and she vaguely felt the zing of human energy join the electrical charge for just the briefest of moments. “Don’ die on me you piece of shit!”

The device groaned with a dying engine as if out of spite to his demand and she wriggled her fingers, pulling out the last of the power and absorbing it with a sigh of relief just as the motor died. She closed her eyes, aware that it actually blocked the world out before she popped them open again and the room still stood out as plain as day. Growing giddy at the prospect of no longer drifting in the dark, she rose up, still incapable of feeling her feet but she could see she had a body now when she darted for the parlor’s window. It was grimy and needed Windex but beyond the dirt there was an exterior, an outside! She could see trees and an overgrown yard with a beaten up truck that looked too rusted for what year it was parked outside, leaving tire tracks in the long grass.

She ignored the man for now while he fussed over the box that gave her sense of self back, moving into the hallway and gasping at the revealed foyer. It was a house; she had been inside a house all this time!

_Her house,_ the memories whispered, conjuring images of what it used to look like to overlay the dreary, dusty state of the place now. She basked in the glow of the modest light suspended from the lofty ceiling, holding her arms out and spinning in circles, the urge to laugh nearly rising out of her but then the image was gone again. The current state of the entryway was dingy and faded with age, debris of dirt and trash littered the floor and the wood lost its shine even in the daylight streaming in through the open front door.

The house didn’t fade though, it thrived in her vision when she left the foyer and flew through the halls, eagerly peering into familiar rooms, opening the cabinets in the kitchen with eager fingers but none of her dishes were to be found. In fact, all of her personal things seemed to have been taken away. The curtains in the dining room were still torn apart from her fury when the man with the golden hair still resided there. She froze up at the memory of him again, staring down at the desecrated curtains and vaguely feeling the thick material in her fingers from long ago. His smiling face loomed large in her mind’s eye again but she still couldn’t remember his name. She couldn’t remember her name either.

But she remembered the house. Oh, did she remember the house.

She remembered the vacant spot of land in the woods that offered her the solitude she craved and him the space he needed before a structure was even constructed there. She oversaw the whole thing herself, the man merely providing a bit of input here and there when they couldn’t decide on a design but leaving the rest in her hands until it came to decorating. Construction hadn’t even been complete but he insisted upon making the first floor of the house into a home with carpeting and wall paper. He stocked it with furniture and she planted a garden, keeping herself busy with bulbs and seeds while he planned the rooms and how they would come together. That house had been a labor of love between them and when love had failed her, the house was all she had left.

_This house is mine,_ she thought, her hands squeezing into tight fists and she hardly noticed how she drew in all of the sun-given heat from the room naturally lit room, leaving the air cold in her wake. _I will make sure it stays that way!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marianne is waking up from her dormancy and she's ready to take back what is hers from the stranger that has dared to take up residence in what she knows to be her home.


	3. Bog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bog and some old friends of his begin the renovations on the mysterious house.

Construction followed not long after the purchase had become official. Loans and renovation permits were signed and processed. Bog didn’t waste any time moving out of his mother’s guest room at her condo and heading out to the formerly abandoned house to begin his work. He probably should have stayed where there had been a functional kitchen but that was what fast food was for. Proof of his frequent patronage to burger joints littered the kitchen floor and his makeshift table of two saw horses and a large sheet of plywood. There were some taco wrappers currently roosting on his table as origami birds that Brutus had made in an attempt to impress Stuff, his only female friend who doubled as a worker from his old construction job.

Ah yes, construction. Bog knew the trade well, considering his father once owned a construction company of his own. Good old King’s Construction. A business his father built from the ground up since immigrating from Scotland after being kicked out of the house. He made a successful business before he met Bog’s mother and they married on the edge of the late seventies, just in time to pop out Bog by nineteen eighty. He admitted he had a good childhood growing up around construction sites, watching his father work and prep him for the day he would inherit. The place, unfortunately, took a nose dive when a man by the name of Greenfair assumed ownership of the Rhodes construction company, inheriting it from his father in law, Dale Rhodes when he retired. Rhodes had been his father’s only competition back in his dad’s day. The influx of business to the smiley bastard Greenfair robbed Bog’s father blind of clients until he had to shut the company down.

With plenty of skill and no family business to run, Bog went to work for Rhodes once he was out of high school. He worked with them for years before Greenfair laid off his team due to downsizing. Monica had appeared during the good years where he worked and lived on his own before she too yanked the carpet out from under him and left him seeking shelter with his mother when he lost everything thanks to Greenfair. It had been his mother that insisted he put the money they had tucked away from his father selling off the company to use and get a house of his own. Now that he did, he had a project to not only keep his hands busy and his mind off of Monica’s abandoning him, Greenfair’s firing but it also provided work for his former team. Brutus, Thang, Stuff, and Nails were all willing to work for a few bucks but it took a little extra incentive after they saw the project he was damning them to.

He mused over the first day they rode out there with him in Brutus’s SUV. They stood ankle deep in weeds while regarding the unfinished house. Stuff deemed it a money pit, crossing her arms and verbally pointing out everything that it would need from what she could see from the outside. Bog didn’t hold it against her since he had been just as cynical about it when he first saw the place. However, the more work there was to do, the more time he had to keep himself occupied and not spend it thinking about his shortcomings. Brutus was ready to start ripping the place apart by the time they were browsing the empty rooms, Nails offering to restore the old bit of furniture in the living room they found. Thang was overly optimistic about the whole thing but after knowing what he was getting himself into, Bog would take whatever positivity he could get.

Now Bog had his crew in full swing, each of them picking up projects to begin molding the empty shell of a house into something livable again. They started out with the kitchen and Bog made good of his silent promise to take a sledge hammer to that tile counter top he disliked so much. Words could not describe how good it felt to wrap his hand around the handle of the hammer, hoisting it from where it had been sitting on the floor and swinging it over his head. The weight of it seemed to only build up the anticipation when he walked over to the counters. It came to a swell of relief the moment Bog proceeded to swing it down upon the surface. The tiles cracked and shattered at the impact of the sledgehammer, chips tinkling to the kitchen floor but he barely gave the debris time to settle before he was bringing down his next swing with a breathy chuckle.

The rest of the crew worked on demolishing the cabinetry, letting Bog have his way with the counter tops. They let the man have a wide berth while he worked with a twisted grin on his face, influenced by his immense satisfaction at the destruction caused by his own hands. Bog made strike after strike against the old white tiles, watching bits jump and splay at each impact until the counter caved under the weight of the hammer and shattered into the cabinets that had been supporting it. Bog propped the sledgehammer over his shoulder as the last of the dust cleared through the open doors and windows, catching his breath from the exertion while Brutus manually ripped a section of cabinetry from the floor, hauling it out the kitchen door to throw off the back deck and into the dumpster they had rented.

“BK, the generator’s acting up again.” Stuff called before appearing in the kitchen doorway. She had her goggles hanging around her neck, brushing a strand of dark hair from her forehead with her thickly gloved thumb. “All of the work lights are up but we have no power.”

“Shit,” Bog lowered the sledgehammer, pushing his safety goggles up until they sat on the crown of his head before following her out of the room and thumping the tool upon the floor, leaning the handle against the wall without breaking his stride. “Go check the lights again while I work on the generator. Brutus you can start working on the upper cabinets!”

“Okay,” Brutus called over just as he reentered the kitchen from outside just as Stuff hurried off to follow his order. Thang took particular joy in hauling out the shallow metal sink to toss into the dumpster now that Bog wasn’t swinging around the sledgehammer anymore.

He stalked down the hallway to head towards the parlor at the front of the house. There were cables for the work lights lined along the baseboards and duct taped out of their way to avoid trips but the gesture would be meaningless if they didn’t have any light to work in that night. He quickened his pace when he first heard the spluttering of the faltering generator, hurrying up the hall.

“No, no, no, no!” he called out as he entered the room, ignoring the early evening beyond the windows and going straight for the motor. Removing his work gloves he threw them aside as he crouched beside the dying device. He tried to save it when it hiccupped and wheezed, snarling to himself when he beat his fist against the damn thing, trying to persuade it back into life. “Don’ die on me you piece of shit!”

It answered him with a death rattle and Bog nearly roared in fury, clawing his fingers over the dead generator and tilting his head back with a long groan before he stood up and kicked it. The generator jumped an inch to the side then settled again while he braced his hands upon his hips, sighing down at it. Wiping at his face and feeling a bit of grainy residue from the demolition, he ignored the gesture and crouched back down before the machine, checking the fuel tank and the lines to ensure it was filled up and that there were no potential clogs. Fact of the matter was that it was just old and it was probably time to invest in a new one. He just needed it to chug along for one more night. He needed lights if he wanted to keep working. Work was safe. Trying to sleep was too much down time…too much time to think.

He yanked the power chords from the lights out of the sockets and began the process of restarting it. With a few hard tugs on the starter rope followed by one more good kick into its side, the generator finally came back to life. He sighed in relief, switching the throttle then keeping an eye on it when he moved to pick up his gloves from where he had thrown them on the floor. The generator sounded a bit wheezy still but at least it was building up the charge with the indicator light growing bright with power. He tugged the gloves back on to get back to work when he heard screams coming from down the hall.

Bog tore back down the hall to the kitchen, nearly tripping over his own boots before he came staggering through the doorway. Brutus was standing against the wall near the doorway with a shaking Thang in his arms. The smaller man was clutching handfuls of Brutus’s shirt while they gawked wide-eyed at the far wall. He peered over to see what it was that had spooked them but saw nothing aside from all of the upper cabinet doors open, the lower ones all gone thanks to Brutus already ripping them out. There was still tile debris on the floor from Bog’s wrecking spree, boot prints imprinted in the dusty mess but he saw nothing that could have scared Brutus of all people. Thang, well, he was a man of small courage but surely he wouldn’t freak out over nothing.

“What the hell happened?” he snatched the goggles off of his head before folding his arms.

“The—the cabinets!” Thang jabbed a finger at the open doors.

“What about them?” he huffed, running his fingers through his hair with an irritated rustle as he approached them to investigate but there really was nothing of interest.

“They all started to just…fly open.” Brutus explained, dropping Thang to the floor to mime with his hands what he had seen. “I was going to start taking them down like you said but when I went to get the hammer, the doors all started to fly open cabinet by cabinet! Bog, I know no one was there to do it! Thang was right next to me, Nails is at the hardware store and Stuff was out of the room with you.”

“So you’re telling me these cabinets just opened up by themselves?” he arched an eyebrow.

“Yes!” Thang squeaked, clambering off the floor. He finally recovered from being dropped.

Stuff entered the room, glancing around the men before meeting Bog’s eye. “What’s going on?”

“These two idiots are trying to pull a prank,” he slapped his fingers against a cabinet door and it slammed shut, startling Thang. “We don’t have time for this; get the cabinets down so I can start working on tearing out the linoleum.”

“But Bog—“

“Guys, you’re not funny.” Stuff rolled her eyes before going to start what neither of them had done.

Cabinets opening by themselves? They really needed to look into something fresh if there were any further attempts to prank the others. Bog didn’t have time to deal with their horsing around, he had work to do. He went to the parlor briefly while the others resumed their demo. The generator was holding up when he peered through the doorway at it then tested the lights, checking the filmy windows to see that daylight was definitely starting to fade on them and there was an orange hue to the forest outside. The trees almost looked like they were made of amber when he glanced through the window of the parlor. If the sunset was visible from the back porch, he had a feeling a guy could get used to a view like that.

The air around him felt oddly cold when he moved to return to the kitchen. He could already heard someone scraping away back in the other room and the noise was grating on his ears. Even the noise couldn’t distract him from the chill in the hallway though. His hands rubbed a little at his arms, Bog glancing at the air vents in the floor but it couldn’t have been the air conditioning. That was impossible because the electric company didn’t turn the power on yet. He still had three days before they would come out to the house and switch everything on. Puzzled by the drop in temperature, he continued down the hall where the air became progressively warmer. Back in the kitchen everything had resumed its normal temperature but Bog still glanced back behind him, curious about the strange draft.

“You okay over there, Bog?”

He nodded, shaking off the oddity.

“I’m fine.” He went to the tools in the corner of the room and flicked an origami crane off of their makeshift dining table at Thang where he was in the middle of struggling with a putty knife. “Thang, you need to remove the linoleum before you need the scraper for the leftover glue.”

He plucked a utility knife from the toolbox, holding it up pointedly. Thang’s shoulders sagged a bit but Bog didn’t lecture him. He claimed a corner of his own to start the process himself. Brutus finished up with the cabinets while Stuff brought a heat gun over, hovering nearby for when he needed it. With a push of his thumb the blade clicked into place and he smoothly cut through the vinyl blend. It went through easily thanks to the age of the flooring, making quick work of his starting corner until others picked up knives of their own to work from the outer corners inward to create the entire time and cocked his eyebrow.

“Are you going to help or not?”

“Right,” Thang hastily tossed the putty knife aside with a loud clatter and scrambled to pull his own utility knife from his pocket. Once he had it out he gave a little nervous laugh, “I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, it's been a while since I worked on this.  
> Any guesses on who this "Greenfair" is? *winky winky*  
> I got a bit of inspiration to work on another scene yesterday so here's an update!  
> Hauntings always start out small and you can see it kind of ties in with Marianne's last chapter.  
> The chapters in this story will probably all be short like this but I hope you enjoy them when they come!  
> I know construction is probably not the best job for Bog when he kept his castle in a crumbling old stump in the movie but hey, my fanfic! xD


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